


as constant as a northern star

by Maculategiraffe



Category: Blade Runner (Movies), Blade Runner 2049
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Death Threats, Gen, No Romance, No Sex, Physical Pain, Profanity, Spoilers, Stab Wound, wound treatment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 11:10:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13480254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maculategiraffe/pseuds/Maculategiraffe
Summary: Joshi wakes up. Which is the first big surprise.





	as constant as a northern star

**Author's Note:**

> "We're done. Constant K. You can pick up your bonus."
> 
> -interrogator, post-baseline interview, _Blade Runner 2049_
> 
> Just before our love got lost you said,  
> "I am as constant as a northern star"  
> and I said, "Constantly in the darkness, where's that at?  
> If you want me I'll be in the bar"
> 
> -[Joni Mitchell, "A Case Of You"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YuaZcylk_o)

Joshi wakes up. Which is the first big surprise. 

Her abdomen hurts, like she's the one who had the emergency C-section-- that fucking replicant cunt from Wallace, the knife, her glittery murder-eyes-- but Joshi didn't die. Hey. Good for her.

This isn't her office, though. This isn't the floor. The lighting's wrong, and so is the softness at her back, and so is the ceiling, which is grimy and dingy and cracked. 

"Madam," says a familiar voice, which is the second big surprise. "You're awake."

She tries to sit up, which is her first big mistake, and the pain kills her again.

 

When she wakes up the second time, the pain's a bit less in her abdomen, but there's a stiffness to her shoulders that makes her think she's been asleep for too long. She doesn't usually sleep for that long at a time. Too much to do. And she's getting older, too. Can't do field work any more, and can't sleep for those long, luxurious wallows, not without her back seizing up on her, punishing her for it the next day. She stays in shape, but there's a limit to what the human body can do, to stave off time.

The ceiling's the same. She's too afraid to move. Behavioral modification at its finest; enough pain, the body learns fast what not to do next time. 

She remembers the pain, first, and then the voice.

"K?" she calls, her voice cracking and wavering, as if she's a child who's had a nightmare, calling for Mommy and Daddy, half convinced they're not half as real as the monsters under the bed.

"Madam," his voice says again, and after a moment, he comes into view. Sits on the floor beside her. She's on a mattress, on the floor. She can't tell much else, not without moving more than she's willing to, right now. 

K looks like shit. Not the worst she's ever seen, after a mission, but pretty shit. His skin is ashy and dull, his eyes rimmed with red, as if he's been crying, or drinking, or both. He needs a shave.

"Try not to move," he tells her. 

"Do I look like I'm trying to move?" she snaps. "What the hell is going on, K? Where am I? What are you doing here?"

He smiles at her, a bit. He never took her snappishness too seriously, like some of them did, tensing at every harsh intonation. He knew how to take her, with a grain of salt and a dash of grace, impervious and understanding at the same time, a little twinkle in his bluish marble-eyes. She always liked K. 

Which doesn't explain anything. Or, particularly, reassure her. 

"Love's not as deadly as she thought," he says, which makes no sense at all, until he says, clarifying, "The Wallace Corp replicant. Love's what her master called her. She tried to kill you, but you're tough. You were almost gone when I found you. But not quite."

 _"You_ found me?"

"Yes, madam," he says. "I apologize for making a unilateral decision at that point. You weren't exactly available to consult."

"Unilateral decision--?"

He gives her a little smile. "To save you."

She stares up at him. 

The wound in her belly throbs. He might as well have her chained up; she can't move. She doesn’t know where she is, who’d hear if she screamed, besides him. What he might do, if she did.

He was already miles off baseline. What if he's gone crazy, like H, and he's going to torture her, see how many parts he can cut off while still keeping her alive? Or he thinks he's in love with her, like Y. He's going to _kiss_ her, cut her clothes off, and then--

"Don't you dare fucking touch me," she says, making her voice as purely cold and authoritative as she can, in case he still has some functional behavioral triggers.

He looks puzzled, and then his eyes widen, and he smiles for a split second before he smothers the expression in deliberate gravity. She’s reminded, again, of a parent called to a frightened child’s bedside, making a kind effort to take the wild tales of its nightmares seriously. _It’s not funny, she’s really scared--_

“Madam, I assure you, you have nothing to fear from me,” he says. “I certainly have no wish to harm you. And if you’re concerned that I’ve developed some sort of-- amorous interest--”

Does he _know_ about Y? She’s never been sure how much gossip he overheard. He keeps to himself. Kept.

"With all possible respect, madam," he says, "you're not my type."

She stares up at him. It's not easy to be authoritative in the circumstances, but she does her level best.

"You need to take me to the hospital," she tells him.

"I wish I could, madam," he says, and he looks like he means it. "But, at the risk of sounding like a hackneyed detective novel, you know too much. The moment you turn up in a hospital-- or anywhere in public-- Wallace is going to be all over you. Not to mention the department, and-- certain other interests-- I'm sorry, madam. It's not safe. For you, either."

She closes her eyes. Feels her belly throb. She wants to wail out loud. She's so confused, and it hurts so fucking much.

"Where am I?" she asks, her voice weak and pitiful now. She used up all her authority a second ago, and a fat lot of good it did her.

"I can't tell you that, madam," he says, still sounding apologetic. "At least, not with the degree of accuracy and precision you would usually expect from me. I'm working on rectifying that situation, but a lot of things are going to depend on your choices, here. First of all-- do you want to live?"

It doesn't _sound_ like a threat, but she can't figure out how it could be anything else.

"I'll obey, if you order me otherwise," he tells her. "If you feel I acted inadvisably, saving your life."

His eyes are steady on hers. He looks awful, and tired, and kind. 

"I can kill you painlessly. You know that," he adds, smiling now as if it's an inside joke between them, his well-established ability to do exactly that. "I'd dump your body somewhere plausible. The assumption would be that your murderer panicked, after killing you in your office, and carried your body elsewhere, to dispose of it. In fact, that _is_ the current assumption, except, of course, that your body hasn't been found. But-- so much blood spilled. You almost certainly didn't survive."

Joshi closes her eyes. He lets her, doesn't say anything else. For a bit.

She isn't sure if she sleeps, or faints again, or just zones out from pain and fear, but time's been very fuzzy when he speaks again, says, "I'm sorry to disturb you, madam, but I need to check and clean your wound, and change your bandage. May I have permission to touch you to that extent?"

Laughing is a really bad idea. Fortunately, it's self-correcting; the pain makes everything a lot less funny.

"Yeah," she says, when she can speak again. "All right, K. You can touch me to that extent."

 

It's while he's changing the bandage, deft and gentle hands at the vortex of pain down her body, that she starts to cry. Silently, or almost.

"I'm sorry, madam," he says. She can't see his face. "I'm doing my best not to hurt you."

"It's not that," she says, with only partial truth, because if she weren't this weakened by pain there's no way she'd be crying over something this stupid. "It's just-- I had a date. For Friday."

There's a pause before he says, "I'm sorry."

"It probably wouldn't have been--" She winces, bites her lips as the pain spikes, then exhales. "I never date, I don't have time, you of all people know that, I don't even have time for a goddamn succulent plant. But it was a classic meet-cute. At the deli. We both reached for the last can of cream soda. She said I could have it if she could have my number." She breathes again as he presses down on the tape. "We were just going to get a drink. Friday. See where the night went. I was going to wear a dress and everything."

"Madam," he says, straightening up, examining her with some interest. "I had no idea you harbored these-- inclinations."

She snorts. "What, towards dresses? Or cream soda?"

"Towards romance," says K, with a little smile, as he sits back down on the floor, where she can see him. "Adventure."

"That's your idea of adventure?"

"Yes," he says, not smiling now. "I'm truly sorry you'll be missing your date, madam."

She breathes a few times, trying to maximize oxygen and minimize pain, before she says, "What happens on Friday, now?"

"I don't know," says K, seriously, looking down at her. "Everything's changed. The wall-- remember the wall you spoke of? When you ordered me to find and kill the child? The wall you said the world was built on?"

"Yeah," she says, because it hurts less to speak than to nod.

"It's coming down," says K. "There's going to be a revolution. And I'm going to be part of it. If you stay with me, so will you."

She breathes. Thinks about that.

"It isn't too late to die instead," says K, as gently as she's ever heard him speak. "If you'd rather. I promise it won't hurt. Think of it as-- retirement."

She closes her own eyes again.

With them closed, she says, "Why didn't you just let me die? In my office?"

"I don't know," his voice says, and she hears it disembodied, and thinks of his baseline, what were once the reassuring, unvarying cadences of it. _Against the dark, a tall white fountain played._ "Habit, maybe. Ingrained disinclination to let a human life be lost, when I had the power to save it." He exhales, audibly, not quite a laugh. "Or maybe--that soul. The one we both thought I didn't have. Maybe it stopped me. The wall-- it isn't really real, you know. Not even as real as--"

He stops, doesn't say as real as what. Or who.

When he resumes, it's to say, "I'll miss my life. The one with you in it. Now that my new one's starting. I thought-- maybe-- you'd come with me. Be something new. Too."

Joshi opens her eyes, and asks, "When _is_ it too late for me to die instead?"

K looks startled, and then he does laugh, one quick, startled bark.

"It's never too late to die, madam," he says. "It's almost always too soon, instead."

She smiles. 

Fuck. She didn't mean to do that.

"K, you're a malfunctioning skin-job with serious delusions of grandeur," she says, "and you're probably gonna get caught and retired before Friday, and I'm either gonna get found and hauled to the hospital and get worked over by everybody you said, or I'm not gonna get found and I'll just rot to death on this filthy mattress because nobody but you knew where I was." 

She's smiling, and he's smiling back at her. 

"Right," she says. "Fuck retirement."

"Yes, madam," says K.


End file.
